Is Removing a Parking Boot From Your Car a Crime?
What Atlanta drivers should know about the civil-versus-criminal gray area when a boot is placed on their vehicle.
You walk back to your car in a Buckhead lot and find a heavy metal clamp locked around your wheel, along with a sticker telling you to call a number and pay before you can drive away. You did not agree to this. You are not sure the company that placed it had any right to be there. And the question running through your head is simple: if you take the boot off yourself, are you committing a crime?
The honest answer is that this sits in a genuine gray area of Georgia law, and how it plays out can depend heavily on which officers show up.
Why the Same Situation Gets Two Different Answers
There is real inconsistency in how these disputes are handled on the street. In some instances, drivers have called the police to the scene of a boot removal and been told directly by responding officers that the dispute is a civil matter and that they were free to proceed. In other instances, only months later and under similar facts, the police have responded to a boot removal by arresting the person who removed it and charging them with a felony plus multiple misdemeanors.
That inconsistency is not a small detail. It means that the practical consequences of taking a boot off your own vehicle may hinge less on a clear statutory line and more on the judgment of whoever responds to the call that day. Being told once that something is civil is not a guarantee that a different officer will see it the same way.
The Civil Versus Criminal Distinction
The central legal question is whether a dispute over a boot placed on your car is a civil matter or a criminal one. A civil matter is a private dispute between two parties over money, property rights, or a contract, resolved between them or in a civil courtroom. A criminal matter involves conduct the state has defined as an offense and prosecutes on behalf of the public.
The position that these boot disputes are civil in nature is a defensible one. A booting company placing a device on your property and demanding payment is, at its core, a dispute between a private business and a private vehicle owner about property and money. If the matter is properly characterized as civil, you never even reach the threshold of criminal conduct. There is no crime to charge, because the entire disagreement belongs in a civil forum.
Damage Changes the Analysis
Even if someone takes the opposite view and treats the situation as potentially criminal, the analysis still turns significantly on whether damage occurred. Removing a boot without damaging it is a very different act from destroying, cutting, or breaking the device. Where nothing is harmed and the equipment remains intact, the argument that a crime has been committed becomes considerably weaker.
That is the practical takeaway for anyone who finds themselves in this position. Damage to the device is what transforms a property dispute into something a prosecutor can more easily build a case around.
What to Do If You Find a Boot on Your Car
Document everything before you touch anything. Photograph the boot, your vehicle, the parking space, and every sign posted in the lot, including the fine print about permitted parking and booting authority. Photograph the boot again after it is removed to show its condition. These images become your record if the dispute later lands in court, civil or otherwise.
Keep any paperwork, stickers, receipts, or text messages exchanged with the booting company. Get contact information for anyone who witnessed what happened.
Understand that being told by one officer that a matter is civil does not immunize you from a different officer reaching a different conclusion. If police do arrive and you are questioned or arrested, stay calm, do not argue the law at the scene, and contact a lawyer immediately.
Getting Help
If you have been arrested or charged in connection with a parking boot dispute in the Atlanta area, or if a booting company is demanding money you do not believe you owe, get legal advice before you make decisions that are difficult to undo. These cases turn on details, documentation, and how the underlying dispute is characterized.
Full Transcript
We currently have a legal matter in Fulton County. One of the girls removed the boot. The police came out there. They ended up arresting one of the girls and then charged her with a felony and three misdemeanors.
It’s very weird that the police officers took that action, because I was literally at a prior boot removal and we called the police, and the police officers told us it’s a civil matter, go ahead and do it. But two, three months later, when the girls are doing it, then they get arrested.
The gray area of the legality is whether it is a civil matter or a criminal matter. We believe it is a civil matter, so you don’t even get into the threshold of getting arrested or anything like that, breaking the law, if it is in fact a civil matter. Even if you believe it is a criminal matter, it’s still not illegal so long as there’s no damage done to it.
My name is Daniel Nagel. I’ve been an attorney here in the Atlanta metro area for over 10 years. I am the lawyer for the boot girls in Buckhead.